*As we all know, despite his Jan. 20th oath to uphold the Constitution, DJT has already violated it by challengingthe 14th Amendment’s guarantee that any baby born in the USA. is automatically a citizen The Brennan Center for Justice immediately declared his brazen executive order “almost certain to be struck down” —which it was last week by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour who ruled it “blatantly unconstitutional.” But don’t celebrate yet. The Supremes’ 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade taught us that constitutional rights are no longer considered “settled law.”
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*Plante’s cartoon stoked my hopes that descendants of the indigenous occupants of North America have legal standing to sue Conservative wing nuts who try to subvert the citizenship rights of people with whom they disagree.
* Memo to MAGA: People of color were here first. Estimates vary but historians agree that kno fewer than three and a half million Native Americans lived on this continent before Columbus “discovered” it in 1492. Needless to say, the 102 Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 were immigrants, i.e., born in another place. If those hardy newcomers hadn’t stuck it out through punishing New England winter, cleared forests, planted crops and founded towns and villages. and hadn’t later immigrants fomented the Revolution and given birth to the Constitution and decided that all children “born in the USA” would automatically acquire the rights of citizenship, and hadn’t our polyglot population kept refreshing itself with new immigrants who contributed their strenghs and talents to the burgeoning of American universities, governing bodies, and cultural institutions, building parks, hotels, skyscrapers, baseball fields, McDonalds franchises, ski slopes, coffee houses, and comedy clubs. In the run-up to our nation’s 250th birthday, I can’t even begin to imagine how pallid our society would be were the entire population been composed of white people descended from the blodline of the Puritans.
*In David Cronenberg's 1986 horror film “The Fly,” actress Geena Davis speaks the menacing lines, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” That injunction assumed real life urgency on Jan. 20, when the Felon-in-Chief and his merry band of oligarchs swung into action and fast-tracked Trump’s regressive agenda. Gotta take this seriously, people.
*After Elon Musk’s arm punched the air with a Heil Hitler —twice, in case we missed it the first time — the Anti-Defamation League, supposedly the world’s most fearless anti-hate organization, downplayed it, positing that he may have “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm” and assuring us hat his was “not a Nazi salute.”
* Oh, really!? Here it is; judge for yourself whether Musk’s arm was or wasn’t precisely imitative of dispositive photos of Hitler and Mussolini from WW II. It’s beyond disingenuous for ADL to say that “all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt.” “All sides!?” Sound familiar. Or am I the only one who heard echoes of Trump’s, “Some very fine people on both sides.” about the white supremacists who wrought death and havoc in Charlottesville. There is no other side, people. Our side did nothing wrong — except call a spade a spade.
* Where’s the doubt of which we’re supposed to give Musk the benefit? The photos above aren’t AI fakes; they’re historical evidence. You’re looking at three identical version of the fascist salute: outstretched arm, palm down, face defiant. Yet, after innumerable calls that he apologize Musk doubled down, posting an execrable string of offensive puns.
@elonmusk
Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming
*As for the ADL, rather than register shock and condemnation, its lead spokesman, Jonathan Greenblatt, posted apro forma statement that even he admitted his organization has been saying for years:
“We've said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it… the Holocaust is not a joke.”
*Ironically, the person who posted the most forceful and unequivocal condemnation of Musk’s dog whistleto white supremacists was NYC Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who for years has been bombarded with the rabid rights’ accusations of antisemitism. Check out AOC’s passionate message to Musk:
“If [you] want to defend the ‘Sieg Heils’ and the Nazi salutes … that’s on you. . . “I’m on the opposite side of that. I’m not with the Nazis. Two of probably the most foundation-defining things about American history is that we beat the Confederates and we beat the Nazis…I am still not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis, and I will do that until I am 6 feet in the ground.”
Democrats need “better dirty tricks,” was Musk’s acrid response. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” he added, appending a sleeping emoji.
*Appallingly,Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s PM and self-anointed leader of world Jewry, failed totally to represent us. Bibi defended Musk, denied it was a Nazi salute, and said his pal was, "falsely smeared."
*This riveting video demonstrates that it takes a brave young woman cloaked in clerical vestments, and preaching in the voice of an angel, to make the Orange Menace shut up and listen. Since that inaugural prayer service on Jan 21st, he’s been badmouthing Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde who dared to end her homily with a plea for the president to show mercy for all the “people who are scared now,” for gay, lesbian, and transgender children, and for immigrants “who are not criminals,” but who “pay taxes,” and work hard at the jobs Americans won’t.
Focus on this closeup of Trump’s frozen face, his downward glance, his hostile body language. Watch a wide-angle shot of the Trump/Vance contingent seated (trapped) in the first two rows, Vance frowning, studying papers in his lap; Madame Veep frozen in place; Ice Queen Melania shooting her fuming husband a smirky half-smile; others trying their best to control their unruly faces, and, personally offended by the Bishop’s recitation of Christian virtues they could never enact or embrace, turning to one another as if waiting for a signal to stand up and walk out of the Cathedral,
*The other day, a friend asked me to sign a letter protesting Trump’s tongue lash of Bishop Budde. I declined. Adding my name to the signers of that letter may relieve my frustration and sense of powerlessness; at least, I could tell myself, I’ve done something, to resist Trump’s authoritarian juggernaut. But I’ve come to believe that putting one’s signature on an Open Letter, no matter how pertinent or persuasive, ultimately boils down to little more than virtue signaling. I’m looking to join and/or financial support the kind of protest actions that either move the needle closer toward justice or have been demonstrably effective tools of political organizing. I hope, in the months ahead, to bring you information about groups that do both.
Over the past fifty years, vast forests were felled to provide paper to millions of other liberal Americans like me who signed petitions or Open letters supporting racial justice, women’s equality, and reproductive rights. Against the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Gaza; apartheid in South Africa; the Ayatollahs’ takeover in Iran. I put my name on high-minded public policy statements and full-age ads printed in 8-point type in the NY Times. Since the advent of the internet, we signed thing our friends or organizations sent us online. It felt good to press Send. It felt like the new activism.
Since Trump came down the golden escalator, it’s become obvious that pressing Send has about the same impact as braying in the wind. Lobbying office holders, organizing at the grass roots, and getting out the vote are the most effective pathways to political change (witness the seismic results of our last election). I believe those should be our activist priorities during the next four years.
POETRY by Mary Oliver
[from] “Of The Empire”
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
* I’m sickened by this video of an IDF reservist — a rabbi, yet —proclaiming proudly on Israeli TV that he had personally destroyed 12 story buildings. Notice the audience applause when Rabbi Zerbib crows that Palestinians who return to their West Bank villages during the ceasefire will find nothing to return to, no house, no childhood photos, no IDs. Searching for words to describe my disgust, I remembered Joseph Welch’s response to Joseph McCarthy, during the Red Scare: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"All I can say to Israelis and Americans who support Netanyahu’s cruel and reckless government is, For shame. For shame.
MUSIC
This one-minute review of the Yuja Wang recital I attended at Lincoln Center last Friday night comes with a slide show of the young pianist’s signature eye candy outfits. The photos sent me back to the video, "Yuja Wong's Facial Expressions," which focuses on Wang’s style -- the short skirts, glittery gowns, sky-high heels, that define her distinctive fashion choices. (In the film, her manager says, "If her skirt was any shorter, her concert would be rated R." ) I admit to enjoying the scene in which Wang chooses her outfits for a Carnegie Hall concert. When her manager expresses enthusiasm for a white dress, she replies white is “too virginal” for her. Black and red are better because they're more "dangerous." She’s also filmed surrounded by chaos in her uptown apartment, providing an extreme contrast with the strict discipline she imposes on her work.
For all that, the film, produced when she was 26, also showcases Wang’s fantastic piano technique and her endearing personality, a mix of confidence, humor, and humility. "I really don't give a shit about what other people think," she declares. “I'm the boss."
Clearly, the confidence is well-earned. She's been called a global superstar, a prodigy, a wunderkind, and “one of the best living pianists in the world”. I've seen her in person only four times - at Carnegie Hall, Geffen Hall, and twice at Tanglewood -- each recital leaving me breathless, stunned by her virtuosity and the sight of her flying up and down the keyboard leaving a blur like the wings of a hummingbird. Don’t miss the history-making Rachmaninoff concert in which she wore of heart monitor with astounding results.
HUMOR
*You won’t believe how well this toddler, who can’t talk yet, argues her case.
*“The three most mispronounced words in the English language are Famished, Farflung and farfetched. They should be pronounced f’misht, f’fetched and f’flung.” — Theo Bikel
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